From off the beaten track -
A couple interesting articles have popped up recently. Both make valid points, although I'm not sure what the overall meaning is that I should be taking from them. I'm still letting the ideas wander through my head, and perhaps I'll come up with something to say about them.
Any thoughts?
Why You're Not Married - Tracy McMillan
Where Have the Good Men Gone - Kay Hymowitz
1 comment:
And the man bashing has begun...
Both were interesting articles, and well written, but each had a strong tendency to generalize. Maybe the authors of these pieces are talking about a city life style, or just live in different situations than I do, but in reality, I don't see it.
It seems like both are drawing a distinction: there are the marriage material guys and there are the jocks/nerds/useless boys who will never grow up. In my experience, this distinction is useless. There are many successful married men with families and jobs who enjoy having "guy's night out" and play video games for fun. Plus there are the men who, though unmarried, wish to be, and due to not having found "the one" are still living the single life.
But women, ah the women, we're still mature, and want to be married (which is of course a bad thing). We never want to do trivial things and just have fun. Plus McMillan's article puts all the blame on us, yet still manages to make it about men's inadequacies. I know many single women who would be offended at the logic behind this article, though doubtless it rings true for some.
Social commentary? This is not a new problem. There have always been women over the "appropriate age" to be married looking for the right guy to come along. As a society, we're like teenagers "no one knows how I feel, this has never happened to anyone before." Sorry, but claiming that this is a new question or issue is silly, the term "old maid" was not coined in 2011.
Blame the women, or the men, either way the bottom line is: there is no real place to allocate blame.
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